


Wilting Lotus

by sparklight



Category: Moonlight Garden (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Flower Maiden Dynamics, Sick Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 15:44:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17409683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklight/pseuds/sparklight
Summary: The last days of the Lotus Blossom Maiden.





	Wilting Lotus

**Author's Note:**

> This contains both canon dialog lines and a few original ones.

Joo Yunhee died at seven, with the doors of a great, sprawling and beautiful mausoleum closing behind her, and if her parents mourned their loss, Yunhwa didn't know. She'd like to think so, but at the same time... At the same time, with another pair of doors closing behind her and screaming, pleading sobs still heard behind the thick wood, Yunhwa rather hoped her parents hadn't felt enough to mourn for their little girl. Their would-be flower. Because at the moment her heart was fit to burst, and not at all thanks to the poison slowly choking the life out of her. The tears soaking her bedding as she curled up on it, exhausted, wasn't even her own.

They were Yunwoo's, they were Dohwa's, and they fell like nectar as the still air slowly choked with her scent.

If she could've spared them their grief and the upcoming reason for it, she would have. She would rather have died like she had when her name was Yunhee, still, either unknowing of her parents' grief, or unmourned because they had resigned themselves to losing her long before she passed through the doors into Moonlight Garden.

And now...

Now she was utterly alone, surrounded by nothing but muffled birdsong from outside the walls of this building and her own scent. She could feel it clog up her throat, burn her eyes, rake her nerves. When there were many Flower Maidens around, one never needed to worry about smelling only themselves; the many floral scents mingled in the air, making Moonlight Garden smell like the garden hidden within its confines had sprawled out all over the grounds. It was pleasant. It was a comfort as much of a reminder of what, and where, they were. But now, alone in the crypt...

Yunhwa pressed her hands to her face, choked on a cough, and perhaps a few of those tears were hers, and for herself, as well. It wouldn't be long, either way. She just wished she could've seen Yunwoo one more time...

One day turned to two, four, six.

The growth of flowers spread, but did not choke her. Not completely. All because the Mistress had allowed the clever Peach Blossom Maiden to join her in the crypt, to attempt to stand before _this_ door and hold them open with her own two, slender hands. Yunhwa wasn't selfless enough to refuse a single elixir given her, or give back any of the hours of labour put into the effort of staving off the vines that were choking the life out of her. Dohwa had rings under her eyes, and her movements were choppy, but she never missed a measurement, never spilled a single thing, and the day she'd thought to be her last saw her with a chill to her limbs and a struggle in her lungs, but alive.

Alive, and...

"Yunwoo!" She smothered her cry and her tears in rich, soft fabric and threw her arms around Yunwoo. Allowed herself to fold into the strength of the arms now keeping her up and pressing her against Yunwoo's body as much as she was burying herself against it. The lantern disappeared up into the air behind them and Yunhwa had already been given all she could've wished for in this moment, so she didn't need the lantern wish. And if there was another wish to be made---

That could come later.

For now, out in the soft night air, her scent wasn't as overwhelming, and Yunwoo's clothes and skin against her face smelled of _Yunwoo_ \- and, thankfully, with amazingly little evidence of Yunwoo's own sickness. By the point Yunwoo said they should all make a wish and Dohwa walked off, Yunhwa could stand up straight and smile into those rich brown eyes, simply _resting_ her hands against Yunwoo's arms instead of clutching at them.

"I think my wish has already come true," she said, breathless and soft, and with no trained, petal-soft artifice as had been ground into her by years of training. It was always easier to let all of that go with Yunwoo with her, since she truly didn't care. Even before ill-advised, shy seeds of emotion had blossomed into love.

"So has mine," Yunwoo said, and whether it was her who pulled Yunhwa's hand up to cradle her face, or Yunhwa who reached up to stroke light fingers over soft skin and curve her hand around that cheek, didn't really matter. Yunwoo's hand was warm against her own, and while it also made clear how thin her skin now was, dry and soft and _wrinkling_ with every motion – not in the same way humans grew old, their skin loosing taut freshness, but the dry wilting of flower petals - Yunhwa didn't care. The touch warmed her and chased away the pain of moving.

Fireworks echoed around them, casting flowers of light and gunpowder against the black heavens, and Yunwoo's lips on hers were light. Light, and then she pulled her closer, squeezed Yunwoo's hand tighter, and felt Yunwoo's hand dig into her waist even through the clothes. She could taste salt and her own scent as Yunwoo fairly devoured her mouth, but she was just as desperate in turn and wasn't it perverse, to feel desperation but no driving, all-consuming _lust_ , and be relieved for it? To _treasure it_?

Maybe, maybe.

"Here, Yunhwa," Yunwoo whispered, pulling her hand around so it was palm up, and dropped the ring into it, then closed her fingers around it, "wear it, so I can be here with you, right until---" Yunwoo choked on the rest, but Yunhwa also raised her other hand and pressed her finger to trembling lips to silence anything else said.

"None will be closer to me." She raised herself up on her tiptoes and kissed Yunwoo again, her finger still between them, and pretended her eyelashes weren't heavy and that her eyes didn't burn. "This is a beautiful night, Yunwoo. Thank you."

And if she went into wilting taking her real wish to her non-existent grave, even Yunwoo wouldn't have to know. For who wouldn't have wanted more time, a chance to live life as everyone else got, or, at the very, very least, a chance to live life like a _regular_ kisaeng, and always have Yunwoo come to spend time with her?

There was yet time this night however, and she fell asleep only in the early morning, her head in Yunwoo's lap and Yunwoo's hand carding through her long, pale hair in an unerring rhythm. Their hands were still clasped and had been for hours, though she woke empty-handed to Dohwa's bright call announcing her arrival to work on the elixir she took in the morning. Even with Dohwa's brightness filling the room, Yunhwa felt cold, and her hand felt heavy---

Oh.

She turned around and quickly dashed her tears away, letting Dohwa see nothing but her smile, even if that smile was, for once, less for Dohwa herself and more for the ring now adorning her finger. Yes. She wouldn't be alone. Not with Dohwa here and Yunwoo's gift on her finger.

Day seven turned slowly, laboriously, into the eighth, and while the morning was beautiful and softly warm, she could feel, _taste_ , nothing but lotus flowers. Her eyes were dry, but burned like there was something stuck in them as she reached out, slow and aching, and let her hand drop to Dohwa's shoulder. She couldn't quite squeeze it.

"Yes, I believe you can," Yunwha said in answer to that trembling declaration that Dohwa could make the antidote, that _this one_ would do it, managing a whisper, steady but too soft, too low, and Dohwa's hand as she reached up to touch hers was heavy for as light as it was, the trembles feeling like a great shaking, petal-soft against her dry thinness. "I'm sorry... I won't be able to wait for you."

There were no tears this time, while Dohwa overflowed with them, and once again she wished she could've died like she did at seven. She would rather have spared Dohwa this, but oh, she'd _hoped_ \---

"I was too late," Dohwa's voice shook, then cracked, but even in breaking it was lovely (what could a Flower Maiden ever do that was _not_ lovely?), "if I'd only worked faster..." Her voice failed as she broke into wailing sobs, and Yunhwa smiled even as it hurt her.

"That's not it." Gently, as much for Dohwa as for herself, for it felt like every twitch of aching muscle and stretch of burning tendons made the flowers now adorning her from top to toe all the more vivid, she brushed a couple of Dohwa's tears away. She then pulled the girl close so she could bury her face in her shoulder. "It's okay, Dohwa. I know you'll be sad..."

And oh, if she could spare her that, but she wouldn't go back to the day she'd looked down to see the grumpy, defensive girl crying from the spectacle they'd made of the Poppy Blossom Maiden, and _not_ ask her if she was okay. She wasn't quite that selfless, for Dohwa had been a light, a gift, and had given her days more at the end of all this than she otherwise would have. Had given her a night with Yunwoo.

So she held her close, as hard as her failing muscles could manage, to give her the only thing she could, right then.

"But try not to cry too much after I'm gone. Thanks to you, I was able to see Lady Yunwoo again..." Her heart bled light and poison inside of her, but Yunhwa couldn't regret it, not when she was surrounded by love as well as grief. "And because you were right by my side... I wasn't alone until the end."

The end...

The doors were closing, and her flowers, while they bloomed over her body, were wilting inside of her, leaving only poison in their wake. She pulled back, and that motion spilled petals from her hair, out of her sleeves.

"Thank you..." It failed her. Whatever else she'd intended to say, to do, it failed her. Her smile failed her as well, and Yunhwa saw nothing, but her mouth and nose were full of the scent of lotus flowers. She felt the ring on her finger, and held onto that for as long as she could, but a flower losing its petals can hold onto nothing.


End file.
